PurelyEloquent

I am aware that continuously writing of the struggles of Kenya is both tedious and overwhelming. So I do try and insert so humor when I can. However, this is one of the most eloquent articles I have ever read and it bears publishing all over the planet. Though it pertains to displaced people in Kenya, no one could fail to see the relevance in most countries and in most politicians anywhere in the world. Please take a minute to read this. It comes from today's Nation.

NEWS

New crown won’t glitter till we settle IDPs

Story by BURI EDWARD
Publication Date: 3/30/2008

Kenya seems to be back to business as usual, but we are mistaken – there is business unusual. That there are fellow citizens still living in the unhomely camps whose hope of accessing their homes is like a candle in the wind is something we cannot wish away.

That they are stranded with no sure plans of what to do or where to go disturbs any sober mind. These are our brothers and sisters, a majority of whom are innocent victims of our greed and hatred.

In the rhetoric of the majority of our leaders, love is a rare word and when love is mentioned, it is political love. Political love is at its height when the people are being wooed for votes. It is a kind of love characterised by leaders masquerading as “men of the people” while they really seek to be “mean to the people.”

They fake emotions that appear as a deep attachment to the people and their issues. They enact a plastic care, promising a never-happening revolution in the standards and quality of life. Naturally, the revolution happens in theirs.

Political love endears people strictly to the extent that there is power to be gained. People are the tool, the staircase to power and more power. After the desired power is pocketed, people can be conveniently discarded to be recycled at a later date.

Political love manages the loyalty of the conquered by releasing to them strategic tokens. These tokens appear in the name of development projects and donations. Their core intention is less to better the lives of the constituents but more to favourably manipulate the constituents’ endorsement for the next round the politician will need a dose of more power. Political love is an orchestra of deceptive power-hunting tunes.

The displaced and homeless people are victims of political love. To the politicians, they are now of little value since they were simply a step in the process of gaining power. They were the tools used to forge power. Now with power already gained, the “tools” can be ignored.

What is there to be gained by draining energies towards them? They are secondary. The primary concern of the triumphant winner is charting the path for building their wealth. The parliamentarian’s favourite book right now is ‘‘How to Build an Empire in Five Years.’’

A passionate write-up on ‘‘Building The Post-election Violence Victims a Home’’ is a luxurious distraction. On a good day, the homeless will get some bales of maize flour and some blankets from the empire’s charity kitty. Surely, do we expect God the giver of life and rain to overlook this immorality?

Should the internally displaced persons mutate their expectations of being supported by the government from a possibility to an illusion? Should they take an indefinite deferment of their hope as the modus operandi?

Should they start to conceive the camps that shelter them now as their new “ancestral” homeland from which they can map their future ventures? All along, we have viewed the displaced persons as people with mouths to eat, so we give them lots of food. But they are people with mouths to speak as well. Shall we let them have our food and deny them our ears?

As they narrate the heartrending, news-making horror they have experienced and the trauma they are undergoing, should we not publicise their daring dreams as well? Surely, they are not to remain helpless and desperate so that we can run to them when we need to exercise our sense of sorry. We have sympathy for them, but we must also give them our empathy.

It seems the further we advance in our political union, the more we are forgetting the status of the displaced. The more peace increases and facilitates our daily businesses, the less our awareness of the “peacelessness” of those living in the reality of losing a home and family with little or no possibility of having it back

The political situation is changing for the better, and this is changing our compassion for the worse. Our eyes are now tuned on our prosperity and any thought of the displaced is an unnecessary and entangling weight.

While the sharing of cabinet posts is a critical demonstration of the sincerity of our political union, the resettling of the internally displaced souls is the true litmus test for the sincerity of our repentance. One may ask, “What repentance?” It is repentance for our active and passive participation in the sacrifice of innocent blood at the altar of our political ambitions and greed for control.

Flashy limousines

Or are the displaced being dismissed as a necessary sacrifice? Or should the dead not be our concern? Should the traumatised be passed over as an unavoidable occurrence? That we spot the victims of our own errors lying on one side of the road and we resignedly opt to pass on the other side questions the authenticity of our humanness. Tinting the windows on our flashy limousines so that our eyes do not confront the stories told by the destroyed structures and scorched lands is immoral.

A critical jewel in the crown of this forming government will be homing the displaced people. The word “homing” is used here deliberately to point out that resettlement is more than the simplistic telling the people to pack their thin bags and go back to their lands.

Homing here carries the weight of reinstitution -- bringing the persons as close as possible to the pre-election state. Resettlement is more than identifying a peace of land and dumping the homeless there to eke out their survival. It is a work on our hands that must be done intensely and effectively. The other victims are dead, and it seems we are abandoning the living to die.

Abandoning these victims to suffering would be a loud siren that we have learnt nothing at all about the value of community. As we step into the possibilities of the new Kenyan dawn, one key way to demonstrate that we are coming to our senses is attending meticulously to the living.

If our political, economic and religious institutions do not urgently render genuine and active love to these souls, the crown of this new era will never glitter.

Buri Edward is a Nairobi theologian and a religious minister.